


we will rise as the buildings crumble

by openended



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Humor, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when the world ends, collect your things, you're coming with me</p>
            </blockquote>





	we will rise as the buildings crumble

The worst-kept secret at the end of the world is that if you make it to a place called Montgomery’s, all the way out in the middle of a particularly useful scrap of nowhere in Nebraska, you’ll find a doctor who won’t make you part with anything in exchange for patching you up.

Mark and Alex look at each other the first time they hear this, incredulous. The idea of free services went the way of five and a half of the world’s six billion people two years ago. With the exception of scavengers and raiding parties, most of whom find themselves shot and dead if they aren’t quick enough, nothing changes hands, no services are rendered, without giving something in return. One thing for another, that’s how this works now.

They abandoned Seattle Grace and its remaining four doctors half a year after, overstuffing duffel bags with medicine, supplies and booze, completely neglecting food or an umbrella. They worked their way down the Pacific Coast in a Jeep Wrangler they found on Alex’s street, the keys still in it; they’d set bones, remove bullets, stitch up cuts and birth babies in exchange for information, gas, food or a place to spend the night. They both worried about ghosts and monsters under the bed growing up and neither had any desire to reawaken those memories by squatting in the houses of dead people; the dead are restless, everyone feels it, and soon they aren’t the only ones setting up tents in the middle of perfect suburban drives.

Somewhere in Oregon, they decided – by way of a question and an answering shrug, _where else we gonna go?_ – to find her. Without any way to know if she survived or not, though both of them thought that if anyone were too stubborn to give up and die simply because statistics wasn’t on her side it would be Addison, they made their slow way to Los Angeles. It took them four weeks to work over all the pharmacies in Portland, saving a few people from taking the wrong remedy along the way. They didn’t find her in Los Angeles, but they did find a woman with a two month-old baby who sung the praises of a redheaded woman with a rich-sounding name who helped the woman birth her son in the middle of a thunderstorm behind the In-And-Out Burger down the street.

Montgomery’s shows up on their radar a year and a half later while they’re cleaning up both sides of a gang war in what remains of Beverly Hills. Mark tells the apparent leader of one side – three bullets in his body and the boy, because he can’t be much more than fifteen, is _still_ talking shit about the boy on the ground next to him – to shut the fuck up about the soup already and tell him more about Montgomery’s. All the boy knows is that it’s a state over in Nebraska – and Alex gives him a look that the boy shoots back with _like I paid the fuck attention in geography_ and Mark conveniently forgets to be gentle when removing the bullet from the boy’s arm – and if he were there right now, he sure as shit wouldn’t have to pay.

They load up the Wrangler with everything they claim to own, plus a couple of tanks of gas they stole from the boy as asshole tax, and leave in the middle of the night.

* * *

Directions from an Air Force Colonel, sitting on the curb in Colorado Springs, playing guitar for the benefit of the birds and squirrels, cost them three cans of soup and a small bottle of ibuprofen. For confirmation that it is Addison, they throw in a fifth of vodka for free and tell him to not mix it with the ibuprofen but when added to the tomato soup, you can almost forget that you’re eating it straight from the can.

“This is in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Alex says, stopping the Wrangler in the middle of the road, clouds of dust billowing up from the wheels. There’s not much cause for worry about blocking traffic; gas is harder to find than working flashlight batteries and all but two cars they’ve passed in the last three days have been abandoned on the side of the road. He squints at the sky through his sunglasses, as if the hand of God is going to come down from the clouds and point in the right direction.

Mark uncrosses his ankles from their spot on the dash and switches so the left leg is on top. His boots are about as dusty as the road. He stares at a map that he’s pretty sure isn’t going to help; it’s a AAA map they found in the glove compartment that doesn’t even mark the road they think they’re currently on. “Whole damn country’s the middle of fucking nowhere, now,” he says. He thinks maybe he and Karev have been traveling together for too long because Karev’s complaints about swallowing dust don’t annoy him as much as they once did.

Two miles later, they pass a sign that used to advertise used car sales but has been since painted over to advertise _Bartertown, 3mi ahead_. Mark hopes that they aren’t going to run into some sort of crazy Aunty Entity (or, worse, that Addison’s turned into one), but he’s pretty sure he could take anyone in a cage match.

Bartertown looks exactly like it should. Ramshackle buildings with hand painted (and often misspelled) signs, stalls and tents set up in the town’s single main street crowded with people shouting and trading. A board set up in the front of town, messages tacked onto it for passing visitors (cost: one non-perishable food item; honor system). Kids running around, giggling at being away from their parents for a few seconds.

Montgomery’s is easy to find: it’s the one with the fight expanding out of its doors and onto the street.

Alex parks the Wrangler by the other cars next to the _Welcome to Bartertown!_ sign and cracks his back once he hops out. He tosses Mark the keys; he’s tired of driving. They both sling their packs – full of things they are unwilling to allow to be stolen; everything else can stay in the car – over their backs and wade into the crowd toward the red building with _Montgomery’s: booze or bullet wounds, we have you covered_ scrawled on the side.

She looks up as the bell over the door tinkles, alerting her to new patrons, and nearly sloshes the beer over one of her regulars. Muttering an apology, she makes her way back behind the bar. “Can I get you fellas something to drink?”

Hair pulled back into something complicated-looking, knee-high brown lace-up boots, and a dark pink sundress, she almost looks like she belongs in this town, in this era, in this nightmare, as she serves up the local rotgut for customers she knows can’t possibly pay her. She’s even started talking like them; a way to blend in and get them to trust her.

Alex swings himself onto a barstool, dropping his pack onto the floor between him and the bar. Mark does the same and shrugs. “What’s good?”

Addison smiles. “Absolutely nothing.”

* * *

Later that night, they watch from the sidelines as she tends to the day’s list of people who need a doctor. One splinter in a big toe, two arms and one forehead needing stitches, a couple stomachs needing antibiotics, and a pregnancy to check up on. People offer to pay her but she refuses, saying she gets enough from the bar and you shouldn’t have to worry about paying a doctor when things are as hard as they are. She smiles when a father brings his little girl to her and after she checks the incision site and changes the dressing, the girl gives Addison the teddy bear in her arms. Addison grins even wider and sets the bear on the shelf, a rescue from the side of the road back in Nevada that she now gives to scared kids.

“What are you doing here, Addison?” Mark asks, leaning back in the ugliest plastic lawn chair he has ever seen in his life. He watches the fire crackle and spark. It seems that even here, hundreds of miles away from the nearest city with skeletons of all sorts, nobody’s willing to sleep inside if it isn’t raining. He has no idea how she ended up in Nebraska. Or why.

Addison folds her hands underneath her head and looks up at the stars, a cardigan tossed over her shoulders against the cool night air. “A month or so after it happened, a guy showed up at the clinic, looking for a doctor. Said his wife was sick and he’d checked all the big cities between there and here and couldn’t find a doctor. I went back with him, ended up here.”

“And you stayed?” Alex is amazed by this fact. Besides the marketplace, and there are plenty of those around, there is precisely nothing in this town. It shouldn’t even qualify as a town.

She leans up on her elbows, picking pieces of grass out of her hair. “What else was I going to do? Drive back to LA? Go to New York?” She shakes her head. “If you guys want to stay, stay. There are good people here and we could always use another doctor or two to send out when people can’t get into town. But if you take off in the morning, I’m not leaving with you.”

Mark knows that he’s going to be stuck slinging bathtub gin for the rest of his days and Alex is damn sure he’s going to go insane from all the haggling that goes on during the day, but they’re both still there in the morning.


End file.
